The title pretty much frames the question. I have not used CHAR in years. Right now, I am reverse-engineering a database that has CHAR all over it, for primary keys, codes, etc. How about a CHAR(30) column?
Edit: So the general opinion seems to be that CHAR if perfectly fine for certain things. I, however, think that you can design a database schema that does not have a need for ‘these certain things’, thus not requiring fixed-length strings. With the bit, uniqueidentifier, varchar, and text types, it seems that in a well-normalized schema you get a certain elegance that you don’t get when you use encoded string values. Thinking in fixed lenghts, no offense meant, seems to be a relic of the mainframe days (I learned RPG II once myself). I believe it is obsolete, and I did not hear a convincing argument from you claiming otherwise.
Where the nature of the data dictates the length of the field, I use CHAR. Otherwise VARCHAR.